Retail Trends in 2025: Key Shifts and Opportunities for Growth

AI is transforming everything from personalised shopping to individualised product recommendations. Generation Alpha, born after 2010, are growing up with entirely new expectations, shaped by digital-first lifestyles. Social commerce is redefining how consumers discover and buy products, while shifts in consumer behaviour are forcing retailers to rethink how they operate, sell and scale. With all these shifts, it is absolutely crucial for retailers to explore the key retail trends in 2025 that are shaping the retail industry and more importantly, how they can turn these shifts into opportunities for growth.

AI-Driven Personalised Customer Experiences

AI-driven personalisation is set to be a defining trend in 2025, with the global AI in retail market expected to reach $31.18 billion by 2028. Over 80% of retail executives believe AI’s role being crucial in gaining a competitive edge, as AI-driven personalisation (using AI chatbots) has been shown to boost conversion rates by up to 30%. Moving beyond rule-based recommendations, AI now uses deep learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to predict purchasing intent and dynamically refine suggestions based on real-time data like browsing behaviour and purchase history. However, to maintain a seamless customer experience, retailers will need a to keep the human touch that strengthens brand relationships. Retailers can achieve this by adopting a unified retail commerce strategy, ensuring that their front-end and back-end systems work in harmony to offer a single view of the customer.

Unified Data Infrastructure: A centralised system that integrates all data sources across the business, ensuring seamless access to real-time, accurate information.

AI Orchestration: The intelligent coordination of AI tools and processes, automating tasks and optimising operations across systems.

As Gary Piper, Sales Director at Barron McCann Limited, puts it:

“AI is the enabler (as opposed to a product in itself) to accelerating automated technology in the retail sector. Retail CIOs should consider how unified their customer front end is with their internal back-end systems. Adopting a unified retail commerce strategy can support retailers in having a single view of the customer.”

Pre-Loved Fashion is Making Waves

Sustainability has moved beyond being a trend to a key driver of retail’s future, and in 2025, pre-loved and second-hand retail is set to become mainstream. Driven by a younger, eco-conscious consumer base, the demand for resale, rental and upcycled products is rapidly increasing, as seen by a 400% rise in searches for “pre-loved fashion” on eBay since the summer 2024 Love Island season. However, integrating pre-loved goods into traditional retail models can be quite challenging. Retailers need advanced ERP solutions that can manage resale complexities like dynamic pricing, condition-based categorisation and automated revaluation based on product condition. These systems enable real-time tracking across multiple sales channels, ensuring seamless integration of second-hand products into existing inventories without disrupting efficiency.

Download our eBook to read how The RealReal is using circular commerce into their retail strategy to sell pre-owned luxury goods, driving deeper customer engagement and stronger brand connections.

eBook: Top 5 Retail Trends Shaping The Future of Commerce in 2025

Generation Alpha and the New Era of Digital Shopping

Generation Alpha, are rapidly entering the consumer market, bringing unique shopping behaviours that challenge traditional retail models. Growing up in a digital-first world, they prioritise experiences over products and expect immersive, tech-driven interactions with brands, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and interactive content. Retailers need to create engaging, digital-first shopping experiences. An advanced ERP system plays a key role in supporting this transformation by ensuring real-time inventory syncing and providing valuable data insights that help integrate immersive technologies like AR and gamification. This ensures that brands can offer seamless, personalised shopping experiences while keeping track of stock and customer interactions.

Rise of Social Commerce in Retail Strategy

Social commerce is becoming a key part of retail strategy, with social platforms expected to drive direct-to-consumer sales by the end of 2025. A survey from Forbes Advisor and Talker Research found that 46% of Generation Z and 35% of Millennials prefer social media over traditional search engines, with 44% of Gen Z discovering new brands daily on social platforms. To capitalise on this, retailers must integrate social shopping features like shoppable posts, live-streamed events and influencer partnerships into their omnichannel strategies. A robust ERP system can connect social commerce, e-commerce and in-store systems, ensuring real-time updates and a seamless, consistent experience across all customer touchpoints, unlocking new growth opportunities for brands.

Kieran Bowden, Chief Commercial Officer at Retail Assist, states:

“Social commerce is transforming retail, but its success hinges on integrating it seamlessly with your entire retail ecosystem for a unified, personalised experience. The only way to do that is through connecting all channels (online, offline and social) and data in real-time.”

RTS 2025: Let’s Build the Future of Retail Together

These trends represent just a glimpse of what’s to come in 2025. Retailers who can adapt, innovate and integrate the right technologies will not only survive, they’ll thrive. As these trends continue to evolve, the opportunity for retailers to stay ahead and scale is very crucial. That’s why Retail Assist and Barron McCann will be at the Retail Tech Show 2025, where we’ll dive deeper into the challenges retailers are facing and explore the innovative tech solutions that can help you drive growth and scalability.

Join us at stand N20 at ExCeL London to see how we can help you turn these trends into growth opportunities. See you at RTS 2025!

📅 Save the Date: April 2nd & 3^rd, 2025
📍 Where to Find Us: Stand N20, ExCeL London (Map)

Book your place now!